Archive for February, 2015

It’s snowing outside as I type this. I didn’t really think that it would snow today. The forecast called for flurries. It’s a big flurry.

The availability hasn’t changed much. We have a few more baskets available and more color showing on what we do have ready. Since it’s after 3 pm on Friday and it’s snowing, I am just going to let the pictures speak for themselves. Mostly.

I do want to show you some new items that were not on our original item list and were late additions. We are trialing these to see how well they sell. New for this spring is our Quart Premium Perennials. We are offering these varieties of Heucheras in the quart size. The cost for these are $3.10.

Here are the rest of the pictures. Please note that we are pulling from 2 crops of snapdragons. Also the marigolds should have a lot more color by Tuesday or Wednesday along with everything else. A lot of comments in our availability are prognosticated comments on what I think a lot of these will look like next week. When I am not sure, I input a conservative comment then check them again on Monday.

#4.5 and #6 Annuals – we are getting their. A few sunny days and we will have a lot more color.

The Fuchsia have buds popping out all over the place. I will probably be adding a lot of inventory in on Monday but for now I only put in a few. I want to see how many bloom over the weekend.

We have some color showing on a few of our perennials. The new Heatwave Salvia looks really good. Unfortunately my photographer didn’t get a picture. I will try to get one this weekend or Monday.

#4 Herbs

The squashes are ready now, but the other items in both 1204 and #4 Charley’s Veggies are in inventory for Wednesday. I think almost all of them will be ready by then except for maybe the okra and cantaloupe.

We are beginning to see some color in the greenhouses. It’s not much but spring has started. This post is mainly for all of you down south where it is not so cold. I am not sure what to say about spring. We are in a quandary as to whether or not we should keep production on schedule or start trying to hold some of it back in case March is cold. We haven’t really had a winter so I guess winter has decided to show up late. Either way, here are some pictures of what we have ready or close to ready.

Frist off we have some color in our Ageratum and Impatiens in the J6. We will be updating the inventory Monday because we have Marigolds, Petunias and other items that we think will be ready later next week that are not in inventory yet. We also have some of our #4.5 Annuals ready along with our #6 Marigolds that are showing color in their buds. They will be blooming soon too.

Our 1801 accent plants look good.

In addition to these onions, strawberries, eggplant, peppers and tomatoes that are shown, we also have a full inventory of cole crops and onion in 1204’s ready.

We have some ferns ready along with our Wave Petunias that are in full color and look great. Not shown are our foliage baskets that are ready so be sure to look at the availability.

I said this last year and I will say it again, I think the Burgundy Velour Wave Petunia will be a best seller this year. The Red Velour Wave Petunia (above next to the neon rose) is a good color to and a much better red than the Easy Wave Red.

We can pull some of our Hardy Ferns next week as well.

Here are some of the items that are ot quite ready yet. A few of them will probably be ready by the end of next week.

This is a new color that you may have seen in the trade magazines. It’s call Johnny Flame. I think it will be a good seller too when it gets ready.

We are getting close to the last of the posts featuring new items. I was going to cram all of the remaining new stuff into this post then decided not to. We are just going to focus on the perennials.

We have made some changes to our perennials where we have added new items but most of these changes are updates to existing items that we have changed colors or varieties.

For instance, we dropped the 3 varieties of Buddleias we were offering and have added in 3 different ones. They are not new as in newly released but new as in we have them last year. Conversely, the Monarda are newly released varieties. You get the picture.

We did a small trial of the Pretty Pink last spring and they did very well. I saw a lot of the Sundenia Red Dipladenia last summer at one of the trade shows, and it looked very promising. So far both are growing well and on schedule.

The Saba Wind Hibiscus is a very vigorous plant. I could probably grade out a few flats to sell today. It’s most likely going to be the first color ready to ship unless it blooms too early then cycles out of bloom come March/April. The leaves are also unique look and large which add to the visual impact this plant makes.

You may have missed it in our packets that we mailed out and you may have missed it in the blog post last week. So just to make sure you are aware, I am doing this post specifically to address our 1204 pack annuals.

What you need to know is that we are not growing any 1204 annuals. We have shifted all the basic annuals production from 1204’s to J6’s (606) and 1801 (#4) production. If you go back to last weeks blog post you can see how we have expanded the 1801 category. We have also increased our J6 production to cover what we would have sold in 1204’s.

The only reason we dropped out 1204 basic annuals we because we have not sold enough of them for that category to be profitable each year for the past several years. We have been dumping 20 to 30 percent of each crop. Basically we didn’t have enough demand for them to keep growing them.

While the 1204 annual category has been shrinking, the J6 and 1801 annuals have been growing which is a trend we expect to continue.

The 1204 annuals are gone but we are continuing to offer our vegetables in 1204’s and #4 Round pots (4″). All the great tomatoes, peppers and vegetables will still be available in 4 packs and 4″. For the last few years we have sold more 1204 vegetable than we did our 1204 annuals.

To summarize all this: the 1204 annuals were dropped, the J6 and 1801 annuals were increased and expanded and the 1204 vegetables were kept.